Harry too heavy for Royal Mail

The Royal Mail has had to lay on extra vans to deliver the new Harry Potter adventure because the 768-page book is too heavy for postmen to carry.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which took JK Rowling three years to produce, is 38 chapters and 255,000 words long and weighs 1kg (2.2lb). But safety regulations dictate that the maximum load for each postal worker is 16kg. The rush of orders to London, Edinburgh and Glasgow is unprecedented and required its own fleet of dedicated vans.

The book is released at midnight on Friday and around 500,000 copies are expected to land on doormats across Britain on Saturday morning - with pre-release sales breaking records. Around 8.5m copies have been printed.

But even if the postmen could carry it, the book is too thick to fit into the average letterbox.

A spokeswoman for the Royal Mail warned all those expecting the book to wait at home until it arrived, or they would receive a parcel slip. That could mean battling with the crowds at their local Royal Mail office.